Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 20 Issue 1 Special Issue on Dynamics of Change in Latin American Literature: Contemporary Article 5 Women Writers 1-1-1996 Power, Gender, and Canon Formation in Mexico Cynthia Steele University of Washington Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the Latin American Literature Commons, and the Modern Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Steele, Cynthia (1996) "Power, Gender, and Canon Formation in Mexico," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 20: Iss. 1, Article 5. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1381 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Power, Gender, and Canon Formation in Mexico Abstract I propose to analyze Castellanos's trajectory from marginalized ethnographer and critic of "latino" society, to presidential insider and ambassador, and the first modern Mexican woman writer ot be accepted into the literary canon. I will explore the intersection of politics, gender, and the (self-) creation of a literary persona with regard to the following issues: 1) the tension between self-exposure and self-censorship in Castellanos's literary work; 2) Castellanos's intense and problematic relationship with her illegitimate, mestizo half-brother; 3) the coincidences and contradictions between Castellanos's journalistic account of her relationship with her servant Maria Escandon, and Maria's own oral history twenty years later; 4) the tension between depression and dependency, on the one hand, and self-assertiveness and audacity, on the other; 5) the relation between Castellanos's role as ambassador and the personal, apolitical, often frivolous character of her journalistic articles written in Israel; 6) the contradictory readings of Castellanos's death, and the respective implications for her place in the canon; and 7) the implications, for their reception, of the love letters published in Cartas a Ricardo 1994, as opposed to 1974. Keywords power, gender, Castellano, marginalization, latino society, Mexican women writer, women, politics, gender, self, self creation, mestizo, Cartas a Ricardo This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol20/iss1/5 Steele: Power, Gender, and Canon Formation in Mexico Letters from Rosario: On Power, Gender, and Canon Formation in Mexico Cynthia Steele University of Washington In Memory of Maria Escandon (1923-1994) More or less accustomed to the role of villain in a relation- ship that started to become public following the death of Balan-Cancin's author in August, 1974, in Israel, where she was acting as ambassador, Guerra is now waiting for the latest attack by "the feminists"-as he himself calls them-made practically inevitable by the circulation of the letters written by the woman who was his spouse from 1958 to 1971, and the mother of his son Gabriel. (Rivera, "Ricardo" 58) Last year saw the long-awaited publication of the 77 per- sonal letters that the Mexican author Rosario Castellanos (1925-74) wrote to her husband, the philosopher Ricardo Guerra, during two distinct periods of her life. The first group is from 1950-52, right after she first became involved with Ricardo, while she was away in Spain and then on her family ranch in Chiapas. This period overlapped with Guerra's mar- riage to the painter Lilia Carrillo and his first break-up with Rosario. This is followed by a fourteen-year hiatus in which Castellanos writes her major works, becomes famous, and marries Ricardo. The second group of love letters dates from 1966-67, eight years into their troubled marriage, while she was teaching Latin American literature as a visiting profes- sor at several U.S. universities, and Ricardo and their son Gabriel remained in Mexico. After she and Guerra divorced Published by New Prairie Press 1 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 20, Iss. 1 [1996], Art. 5 66 STCL, Volume 20, No. 1 (Winter, 1996) in 1971 and she left with Gabriel for her diplomatic post in Tel Aviv, she entrusted the letters she had written Guerra to her close friend Raul Ortiz y Ortiz, with instructions that they be published after her death. There is apparently no record of Guerra's letters to Castellanos, although her detailed com- mentary on them-and, even more frequently, on their ab- sence-makes it possible to reconstruct the gist of Guerra's letters. The manuscript had been ready for several years before Ricardo Guerra, ceding to their son's wishes, finally allowed it to be published. Given Castellanos' stature as a significant Mexican writer and feminist thinker, this would be a major editorial event in its own right, even if she and the other three principals-Ricardo, Gabriel Guerra, and Raul Ortiz-had not all served as Mexican diplomats. (After Castellanos' death Ricardo became Ambassador to West Germany, and Gabriel served as an attaché to the Embassies in West Berlin and Moscow. Raul Ortiz was cultural attaché to the British em- bassy when I interviewed him in 1991; he is now deceased.) When you add to this coincidence of literary and political prominence, lingering questions regarding the cause of Am- bassador Castellanos' death in Israel in 1974, and a high-pro- file literary skirmish over the publication of the letters twenty years later, you have the stuff of mystery novels. These letters, together with Castellanos' uncollected news- paper columns from the 1970s and a series of 1991 interviews with her friends in Mexico City and in Comitan and San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, suggest revised readings of certain aspects of Castellanos' biography and its relation to her place in the Mexican power structure and literary canon: i) Castellanos' estrangement from her childhood confessor, Father Mandujano; ii) possible allusions to danger in letters written several days before her death; iii) the influence of several strong-willed women in the author's life, including a childhood friend, two cousins, and her servant (who was her- self a cousin); iv) the existence of an illegitimate, mestizo half-brother and the story of their intense and ambivalent re- lationship; v) the continual inner struggle between Castellanos' powerful literary vocation and her role as a wife and mother; vi) new evidence regarding Ambassador https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol20/iss1/5 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1381 2 Steele: Power, Gender, and Canon Formation in Mexico Steele 67 Castellanos' attitudes toward the Israeli and Palestinian peoples; vii) the biographical origins of several short stories in Ciudad Real (City of Kings, 1960); viii) lingering ques- tions regarding the cause of Castellanos' death, alleged to be an accidental electrocution; and ix) the continuing issue of literary censorship two decades after her death. i. Invitation to a Book-Burning I am sitting on a park bench in the deepening twilight, across from the Iglesia de San Sebastian in Castellanos' home town of Comitan de las Flores. This is the neighborhood where Rosario's mother, Adriana Figueroa, grew up. It is the same neighborhood where the child narrator of Bah:in-Canon (The Nine Guardians, 1957), out walking with her Tojolobal Mayan nanny, caught her first glimpse of la tullida (the cripple), based on a woman named dofia Cholita (Bonifaz, personal inter- view). This bitter object of her mother's charity is presum- ably destined to lead her into the kingdom of Heaven: Los balcones estan siempre asomados a la calle, mirandola subir y bajar y dar vuelta en las esquinas. Mirando pasar a los senores con baston de caoba; a los rancheros que arrastran las espuelas al cam inar; a los indios que corren bajo el peso de su carga. Y a todas horas el trotecillo diligente de los burros que acarrean el agua en barriles de madera. (11) The balconies are forever staring into the street, watch- ing it go uphill and down and the way it turns the corners. Watching the gentlemen pass with their mahogany canes; the ranchers dragging their spurs as they walk; the Indi- ans running under their heavy burdens. And at all times the diligent trotting donkeys loaded with water in wooden tubs. (trans. Irene Nicholson 15) The Tojolobal servant women sitting next to me on the bench are eyeing me curiously; they obviously are not accus- tomed to seeing strangers, let alone foreign academics, in their neighborhood. They ask me who I am and what I'm doing here; the question will be repeated verbatim the next day by Published by New Prairie Press 3 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 20, Iss. 1 [1996], Art. 5 68 STCL, Volume 20, No. 1 (Winter, 1996) the creepy groundskeeper at the Comitan cemetery, as I wan- der around the elegant tombs of the Castellanos family and the modest graves of their poor relations, the Escand6ns. He pesters me until I give him a tip. The sentiment is also echoed by the young ladina (`white,' non-Indian) woman sitting next to me in the movie theater that night, who, as soon as I sit down, inquires whether I'm traveling alone and if I don't have a husband. Sitting there on the park bench, I am waiting for Father Raul Mandujano to finish mass so I can request an interview. A young writer from Chiapas, who wishes to remain anony- mous, has suggested that I talk to him because he is known to have a strong opinion about Castellanos. Father Ra61's brother, Father Carlos Mandujano, who has died recently, had been Castellanos' childhood confessor.